Ice Cream

In this show, I am not talking about just any food, but food kryptonites. Those are food that will trigger a binge. These are foods that you truly cannot “eat just one” because once you start it as though someone opened the floodgates of hunger and you won’t stop eating until it is all gone or you become physically ill. (In my case, I am talking about potato chips. Or “crisps” if you are in the UK.)

If you have food in your home that causes uncontrolled cravings and temptations, the remedy is simple. Throw it away. Really. Pitch it in the garbage and then don’t buy it again.

But you probably will not do it. I know that there are two basic objections:

You paid money for it and don’t want to throw money away

Other people live in your home and you don’t want to be selfish.

Since you’ve already paid for it, the money is gone whether you eat it or throw it away. You don’t get a refund for eating it. You will only get fatter. So why eat it and unravel any success you may have achieved just because you’ve already spent money on food that is causing your problems?

The second objection is more difficult, but not really. Again, I’m not talking about all the food in your house (I hope!) but rather one specific food. Let’s assume your trigger is ice cream. And you live with others–maybe your significant other, or children or parents. And they like ice cream, too, but don’t struggle with it as you do.

Throw it away.

Be selfish, in the good context. Take care of yourself. We are talking about a food that is not vital to life. And we are not saying that you go to your local supermarket and demand that all ice cream be removed. Just get it out of the house. If your family members really want ice cream, they can go buy some for dessert. (And if they are unwilling to make a separate trip to buy it, they really didn’t want it too badly, did they?)

But here is a comparison. It is not a great comparison, but it will suffice.

Let’s make an assumption that you discover someone in your home has a bad drinking problem. It’s affecting their health, their job, and everyone’s life. Would you dump al the beer, wine and liquor in the home to help them?

I’d guess that you would.

Well, in my earlier example, ice cream is having a similar (albeit much slower) effect on you as the alcohol on your family member. As we gain weight and get older, we will become more of a burden on everyone around us. Obesity makes other diseases worse, and can actually cause diseases (heart disease and diabetes to name two.) If you would willingly give up all alcohol to help a family member with a disease, can’t you ask them to give up ice cream?

It’s not like they can never have ice cream, just as you could still go out for a wine after work. They just can’t bring large containers of ice cream home.

Like I said, it is not a totally equivalent comparison, but I think you understand my point.

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September 26, 2018

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Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen.

Our brains are hardwired to prefer the taste of sweet and salt, and fat (which is now being suggested as the sixth taste–sweet, salt, sour, bitter and umami.)

If you go back to evolutionary history, our bodies craved one thing over all others: calories

Calories meant survival. And way back in those days, lack of food was not because the local c-store was closed. Famines killed. Our bodies became built to store calories (as fat) to prevent future famine-related deaths. Those with the bodies better-suited to store fat were able to pass those genes on to future generations. Those with “skinny genes” (sorry–a bad pun) died early and were unable to pass on defective genes.

We are evolutionarily designed to get fat.

The problem is that in most of the developed world, famines are no longer an issue and we really don’t need to be searching for extra calories to store as fat.

So how does that connect to ice cream and pizza?

A half-cup of Ben and Jerry’s Choc Chip Cookie Dough ice cream has 270 calories. Now, our cave-dude likely had no access to ice cream, so let’s think about something that he could get: animal fat. Which of those three foods would be the fastest to give him the daily calories (let’s assume 2500 calories a day):

Animal fat and honey (or anything very sweet) packs a lot of calories in each bite. When you needed to hunt, gather, and fight for every bite, you wanted it to count. Our bodies are built over the millions of year to crave and love sweets and fats. (We also love salts, because salt would make our bodies hold water to stay hydrated during the long hunts. Because back then, the only Camelbaks found were actually on camels.)

To lose weight, we need to force our bodies to do the very thing that allowed us to survive. That’s why it is so darn hard to lose weight and even harder to keep it off. We are not fighting our own personal natures. We are fighting against nature.

work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!

work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!